Joseph BERNARD (1866-1931) - Lot 74

Lot 74
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Estimation :
35000 - 40000 EUR
Joseph BERNARD (1866-1931) - Lot 74
Joseph BERNARD (1866-1931) Young dancer also called Young girl with drapery (1st state small life) Model created around 1912. Bronze with brown patina. Signed J. Bernard on the right on the plinth. Bears the stamp of the founder Cire Perdue C. Valsuani on the plinth on the left. H. 65 cm RELATED WORK : Jeune danseuse ou Jeune fille à la draperie (petite nature du 1er état), circa 1912, bronze , Fonte Claude Valsuani, 63,5 x 23 x 21,5 cm, Bequest Léon and Michel Bouochut to the museum of Lyon in 1974, Lyon, musée des Beaux-Arts, n°Inv. 185, RELATED LITERATURE : - René Jullian, Joseph Bernard, Ed. Fondation de Coubertin, Saint-Rémy-les-Chevreuses, 1989, n°185, pp.311. - Under the direction of Alice Massé and Sylvie Carlier, Joseph Bernard (1866-1931), De pierre et de volupté, Cat/ Exp held at the Villefranche-sur-Saône museum from 18 Oct 2020 to 21 Feb 2021 and La Piscine-musée d'art et d'industrie. André-Diligent de Roubaix from 20 March to 20 June 2021, Snoeck edition, 2020, Cat.141, p.230 and p. 335. This delicate bronze work entitled Jeune danseuse, also known as Jeune fille à la draperie, bears witness to the search for the ideal of beauty that predominates in the work of the Viennese sculptor (Isère) Joseph Bernard. It is also part of the body of work produced between 1905 and 1910, which marks a milestone in the artist's career and in modern statuary, through his creative search for a synthetic and formal figure. At this time he liked to represent female figures in the graceful gestures of the toilet, as can be seen in Young Girl at her Toilet or Young Girl Doing her Hair, Seated. Our work also bears witness to his intense research into the body in movement. Fascinated by the theme of dance, from the 1910s and especially in the 1920s, he executed graceful, dancing female figures with a simplified canon. The smoothness of the dancer's body is contrasted with the vibrant veil with its regular, streaming folds, which we do not know whether it dries the young woman's body after her bath or whether it serves as an attribute for a sophisticated dance. This rendering of drapery can be found in several of his works, such as Young Girl at her Toilet or Young Girl Seated, Young Girl Doing her Hair Standing, and Young Girl with Braids. This first version, in which the leg is detached from the drapery, was presented at the Salon d'Automne in 1912. A 138 cm high bronze was commissioned by the State in 1919. A second version of the work where the leg touches the drapery is executed in 1926 and is also followed by a reduced size edition. Our work presents the "1st State", a 64 cm edition commissioned by Valsuani in 1912.
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